


Years in Between

by Yevynaea



Category: Guardians of the Galaxy (2014)
Genre: Celebrations, Crimes & Criminals, During Canon, Families of Choice, Father Figures, Fluff and Humor, Gen, Genderqueer Characters, Growing Up, Light Angst, Minor Character Death, Non-Graphic Violence, One Shot, Original Character(s), Swearing, Unconventional Families, and i find that fact very disappointing so i wrote this, and just slightly post-movie at the end of the fic, peter quill had a very unorthodox childhood, sort of, which was not shown at all in the movie
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-09-06
Updated: 2014-09-06
Packaged: 2018-02-16 10:05:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,770
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2265621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Yevynaea/pseuds/Yevynaea
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Peter's upbringing with the Ravagers wasn't quite as bad as people tend to assume. It wasn't great or anything, but it wasn't the worst, either.<br/>A brief-ish one shot giving glimpses of the time in between Peter's abduction from Terra and his misadventure on Morag.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Years in Between

The Terran doesn't trust them at first, even after the first night when they'd injected a translator under the skin behind his ear so that he could understand them. Yondu tried to talk to the kid but only got tears and screaming out of his attempts.The boy's done little but cry and beg the Ravagers to take him home since they picked him up three weeks or so ago. Well, three weeks by Kraglin's count, at least; he's always counted days by Xandarian time so he isn't sure how long the kid would say he's been on board for.

Yondu wanted Kraglin to go try and get the kid to trust the crew, because the boy wasn't making anything easy and the Captain was gettin' damn tired of it. Kraglin feels a little bit bad for Peter, honestly, between everything that's happened to him and Yondu threatening to let the crew eat the kid every time he puts a toe out of line. Truth is only one man on the crew even thought about eating the boy; Yondu just likes to be an asshole. Kraglin doesn't think Peter will ever actually figure out it's an empty threat, though.

Peter's head whips up, his eyes wide and teary, when he hears Kraglin knock on the wall next to him.

"Can I sit down, kid?" He asks. He's picked up the habit already of calling Peter 'kid', even though he's technically not quite even a decade older then the Terran.

Quill eventually nods, and Kraglin slides down the wall, and doesn't say anything else. Peter stares at him for a few seconds before returning his gaze to the floor and his attention to whatever counts as music on Terra.

The boy hadn't let anyone take his music. They'd tried, obviously, taken most of the rest of the Terran's stuff and hid it where the kid _probably_ wouldn't find it, but Peter had _screamed_ when they'd tried to take the music. It'd been loud enough for everyone's ears to ring for hours after, 'cept Doc Asa because the lucky bastard went almost completely deaf a few years back. Peter's scream was awful and pained and terrified and almost animalistic, and no one was fond on the thought of hearin' it again, so they gave the boy his music back. Kraglin still doesn't know what Terran songs sound like, though. He doesn't think Peter will be onboard long enough for him to find out.

Which is why he's surprised when Peter slips his headphones over Kraglin's ears.

"What the hell is that?" Kraglin exclaims, making a face of pure disgust at the alien unfamiliarity of the instruments and melody. Peter looks startled, almost scared for a minute, and Kraglin thinks he's screwed up, that he's done more harm than good in trying to get the kid to trust him, but then Peter laughs. It's the first time any Ravager has heard the sound, and it's loud and sincere and so childish that it reminds Kraglin exactly how young the Terran is.

 "I-I'm sorry, I shouldn't--" Peter has to stop for another giggling fit, and Kraglin finds himself joining in. "Your face just looked s-so funny!" Peter nearly cackles.

They don't stop laughing for a while, and Peter doesn't cry anymore after that.

•••••••••

They end up keeping the boy. They miss the date he was supposed to be dropped of with his dad, and not many of them particularly regret it. And it honestly  isn't much of a conscious decision on the part of any one person. It's more like the bigger half of the crew deciding they actually like having Peter around to help with chores and help come up with plans their adult brains wouldn't have thought of, the other half not complaining _too_ much, and Yondu claiming on what was supposed to be Peter's last day aboard that they'll almost definitely miss the rendezvous time and might as well keep the kid aboard and teach him to be a Ravager.

Yondu completely ignores the knowing look Kraglin sends him, and the slightly irritated glare from Horuz, who probably thinks having the kid on board will make them all soft. Sentiment is a dangerous thing in their line of work; Yondu's seen people who got too attached to their crews, and might as well have been comatose for how broken they were when their people ended up dead. Getting sentimental leads to getting hurt, and Ravagers get hurt enough as it is. Yondu tells himself that Horuz's worry is unfounded, that he won't be soft on Quill and that he'll do anything needed to make sure the boy doesn't get attached to any of the crew. Yondu isn't sure whether or not he's lying to himself, though.

Peter becomes a permanent member of the crew, though no one ever says anything to him about it, since he never knew he wasn't.

 

•••••••••

 

When the batteries on Peter's Walkman finally die, he's upset, of course, but he knew it was going to happen eventually. He puts it away with the rest of his things, which Yondu returned to him eventually, and is quiet for most of the day.

"What's wrong with you, boy?" Yondu asks at dinner, and Peter curls up sadly in his chair.

"Walkman's out of battery." He mumbles. Yondu makes a small 'hmph' sound and gets up from the table. Peter expects the Captain to just leave, but instead Yondu goes to a small cupboard in the kitchen and reaches up to the top shelf, tossing over a small metal disk that bounces off of the top of Peter's head.

"Ow!" Peter glares, but picks up the disk, turning it over in his hands. "What's this?"

"Take the battery out of your music thing, an' stick that to the inside instead." Yondu instructs the boy. "It'll work 'til you're too old to listen to it, an’ probably longer."

 

•••••••••

 

Kinnon looks up from cleaning his blaster when he notices the Terran boy walk into the armory, and the kid freezes in place, staring at Kinnon with wide eyes.

"What're you doin' here?" Kinnon asks.

"I just wanted to see." Peter responds.

"See what?"

Instead of answering aloud, Peter points to his own eye and steps closer.

"How did you get your robot eye?" The kid asks. "Is your real eye still underneath it? Does everything look red since the light in the eye is red?"

Kinnon blinks at the Terran's excited barrage of questions. He'd thought the kid was scared of him, whenever Kinnon entered a room the boy would spend most of his time staring at the Ravager. Now Kinnon realized what he'd seen as fear may have actually just been curiosity.

"No, the real eye's gone, and nothin' looks red 'cept things that already are." Kinnon finds himself answering.

"Cool." Peter says sincerely. "How did you _get_ it though?"

"Job went wrong." The Ravager answers simply, but Peter's still staring at him expectantly. "Took an energy blast to the face. We eventually got the units we'd been promised, though, so the Captain used his cut to help me get this ol' thing."

"Yondu did that?" Peter asks incredulously. "But he's so _mean_."

Kinnon smiles slightly and turns back to his blaster. "He ain't nowhere as mean as he pretends to be, kid. Crazy, yeah, but underneath the threats he'd rather not lose any of us. That's why he threatens all the time, so no one realizes he gives a shit about us."

When he doesn't receive a reply, the man looks up again to find Peter gone. The kid probably didn't hear a single word of his explanation, Kinnon realizes.

 

•••••••••

 

"Yondu!" Peter runs up to the Centaurian with a grin, and Yondu glances up from his breakfast just long enough to see the ridiculously huge grin on the Terran's face. "Yondu, guess what day tomorrow is!"

"The day I finally let Edira and Horuz chop you up for stew." The Captain says, straight faced, but the boy's smile doesn't even falter.

"Nope." Peter replies. "Tomorrow is my birthday! Or I think it is, at least. The days aren't the same out here as on Terra, but the sleep-cycles count as days I think, so it should be my birthday tomorrow if I counted right." The kid grins even wider and starts bouncing in place.

"That so?" Yondu goes back in his mind, trying to figure out how long ago they picked the kid up. He thinks it's been about seven months, on Terra, if his knowledge of their years is correct. "How old you say you were, again?"

"Nine. Ten tomorrow, though." Peter says, still bouncing.

"Don't be expectin' gifts from any of the crew." Yondu tells the kid, who deflates slightly but nods without hesitation, like he'd been expecting that. "I dunno if anyone else even remembers when their birthdays are, some people don't even come from places where birthdays are kept track of. I'm sure some of the crew knows the dates of 'em, from their home worlds, but there ain't no way to match up dates while hoppin' planets. There just ain't much use for birthdays out here."

"Oh. Do _you_ remember _your_ birthday?" Quill asks, and Yondu shakes his head truthfully. "Oh...Can I have a birthday party?"

Yondu chuckles, just the tiniest bit, at the kid's hopeful bouncing. "You want a party, go bug Asa, xe's got a stash of streamers from Xandar somewhere. Hangs 'em up for holidays on occasion." Yondu shoos Peter off, returning to his meal once the kid is gone.

 

When Peter walks in to the infirmary, Doc Asa's working on disinfecting the area around Kinnon's prosthetic eye; every once and a while Kinnon gets stuck in the rain somewhere and his eye rusts, which makes it look super gross.

"Hi, Doctor Asa." Peter says, waving. He knows Asa can't hear him from here, but he likes to talk aloud anyway. The doctor's purple eyes flick up at him when Peter steps further into the room, and Peter waves again.

"You scrape your knees up again, Quill?" The medic asks him, motioning for Kinnon to leave. The one-eyed man does so, standing up from the med table, and ruffling Peter's hair on his way out the door. The boy scowls and tries to slap Kinnon's hand away.

"Yondu said you had streamers for a party." Peter says loudly, grin returning. Asa taps xyr chin with the tip of one bright pink finger, adopting an expression of mock thoughtfulness.

"Let's see." Xe makes a humming noise, leaning back against the cupboard of medical supplies behind xem. "Why would we need party streamers? The nearest holiday anyone here celebrates is still near a month off. An’ I don't remember any big hauls worth getting streamers out for."

Peter goes over and tugs on the sleeve of the doctor's red jacket, and Asa bends over, turning so that xyr good ear is toward the boy.

"It's my birthday tomorrow." Peter says, leaning back and forth on his feet in joy. "I think. I'm turning ten, it's super exciting."

"Ah. A momentous occasion." Asa agrees, nodding xyr head solemnly. "What does a birthday party normally look like on Terra?"

"You have party games, and balloons and streamers, and you eat cake, and open presents." The kid checks off on his fingers.

"So pretty similar to Xandar." Doctor Asa smiles. "Should be easy enough to arrange...except I don't think anyone onboard knows how to make a Terran cake."

 

The next day, they put up streamers in the mess, bright red and blue spun together and hung between corners. They don't find anything to stick the streamers to the walls with besides medical tape, which Asa isn't about to use for anything other than the intended purpose, so Peter swipes some magnets from Fídi, who has a collection she's insistent no one touch without her permission.

"She won't get mad when she hears it's for a party." Asa assures Quill.

The medic bribes Latro and Kraglin into helping xem make birthday rolls. Xe figures that since all three of them grew up on Xandar, between them they should be able to find a decent recipe and make the rolls.

"This's a terrible idea." Latro says, even as ey carefully rolls a slice of dried fruit into each strip of dough. It's the fifteenth time ey's said it, the first being when they were first looking for a recipe. Ey seems adamant that something will go horribly wrong between now and when the rolls will be ready to eat. Kraglin and Asa ignore the fact that on a ship full of Ravagers, ey's probably right.

 

"What in the...?" Yondu trails off, glancing between the Terran boy and the three crew members, all carefully arranging various drinks and foods on the main table. Most of the drinks are alcoholic, but there is some kind of Arplorian fruit juice that Peter's always seemed to like well enough.

"I told the kid to ask _you_ for a party because I thought you'd say no." Yondu tells Asa, who gives the Captain a shit-eating grin.

"Kraglin, will you go tell everyone it's time for my birthday party?" Peter asks, bouncing in place again. Yondu wonders if the kid ever stopped bouncing in the first place.

 

Once the crew is collected, the party begins, minus most of the traditional gifts but plus a game of darts that Peter is very excited to be included in. A few people start throwing knives because half the darts have broken since they got the set. There's drinking and singing and quite a few people pull on Peter's ear lobe, which the boy is a bit confused by until Fídi pinches his arm ten times instead, like Peter's older cousin used to do, and says it's the same.

Horuz grudgingly offers to teach Quill about the ship's engine, Edira gives the kid the smallest of hir daggers, and the rest of the crew, led by Kraglin, presents a small-ish Ravager coat, the same dull red as the rest of their jackets. Peter looks about ready to pop with glee when they hand him the thing, and he hastily pulls it on. It's too big for him, but he'll most likely grow into it within the year. And then grow out of it, Yondu thinks, at which point they'll have to replace it with another one.

 

The party is pretty much over, the treats all eaten, when Yondu approaches where Peter is sleepily listening to Sinenfa and Fídi tell stories about their less violent adventures. The Terran looks up at the Centaurian with a tiny, content smile, and Yondu crouches down to sit beside the kid. He reaches into his pocket, pulling out a small black gem on a length of twine, and hands it to Peter.

"A good luck charm, accordin' to some superstitious crazies on Traobos. Picked it up on our last job." Yondu explains. "Here."

Peter takes the pendant and watches it swing back and forth. Smiling over at Yondu, the boy stuffs the gem into his pocket.

"Thank you."

 

•••••••••

 

The first time Peter ever kills anybody, it's mostly an accident. Peter thinks he's eleven by now, though it's hard to tell when his birthday could be next week or four months ago. They hadn't had a party this year, and Peter's kinda given up on trying to keep track in his head of when Terran months end and begin. He's been on the Ravagers' ship for just under three years, at any point.

Yondu's long since taught Peter to shoot, and a couple of the other Ravagers taught him how to fight. It's just the basics so far, but Peter is still small and never given anyone worse than a broken arm, so he's fine with only knowing basics.

There's a raid, and Peter is still learning to do the kinds of work Yondu and his men do, so he's usually told to stay on the ship and wait for the crew to come back to it. In the beginning Yondu used to make someone, usually Asa, stay with Peter so the Terran wouldn't run, but for a while now he hasn't needed to. Peter is a Ravager now. He doesn't have anywhere else to go anyway, so he obeys on the days he is told to stay on the ship. This time is one of those times, and Peter is listening to his Walkman and wandering the ship in complete boredom, when he hears voices.

They're quiet, so Peter automatically knows it isn't the crew. If it was the crew they'd be shouting about something or other.

Peter retreats away from the voices as quiet as he can, hiding in one of the vent shafts down the corridor and pulling the grate back on behind him. He stays there, unsure what to do, for a while. Whoever the intruders are, they don't worry about being quiet once they search the ship and come to the conclusion no one is home. Crashes and curt shouts echo off every surface in the ship as they search it for whatever they find valuable.

Heavy footsteps stop just outside Peter's hiding spot, and the boy  grabs the gun Yondu had given him what seems like it could've been a month ago, the one Peter's never used on something alive. The intruder bends down, pulls the grate off the vent, and leers at Peter. The man-- Peter thinks the intruder is a man, anyway, but he's learned you can never be sure with aliens-- is orange-skinned and has teeth like a shark, except maybe less rows of them. The man bares his teeth in a terrifying grin, and Peter screams and scrabbles backwards.

The man grabs Peter's ankle and tries to drag him out, and Peter kicks the stranger square in the nose. This makes little difference, though, because the man doesn't lose his grip, only curses loudly and holds on tighter, using his other hand to reach for Peter's gun.

The shot goes off before Peter even really realizes he'd put his finger on the trigger. The intruder's blood is a dark metallic grey, splattered near-invisibly on  the metal floor just outside the vent, and Peter tastes it on his tongue because he hadn't closed his mouth from screaming yet. It tastes like metal and salt and-- strangely-- thyme. Peter closes his mouth, spitting in panicked disgust when his brain fully processes what the silver droplets on his tongue _are_.

Hurried, loud footsteps bring Peter's focus back to the remaining invaders, and the boy turns over and crawls further into the vents, until he's around a corner and can no longer see the open grate and what lies outside it.

Still holding the gun, Peter shakes but he doesn't cry. He forces himself to put the gun down next to him, then draws his knees tight up to his chest and wraps his arms around them, breathing deeply.

He doesn't come out until after he hears the crew come back, until after Yondu whistles a not-quite melody and kills the rest of the invaders, then spends a few minutes yelling at Peter to "come out of the vent, damn it, boy, I know you're in there!" Peter finally crawls out after Yondu uses his favorite threat of letting the crew eat him, and the Captain looks him over to make sure he's unhurt before pointing to the glassy-eyed corpse on the floor beside them. Peter _was_ trying to ignore it.

"You do this?" Yondu asks curtly, and Peter gives a tiny nod. Yondu claps Peter on the back and grins wide. "Right b'tween the eyes, just like I taught you. Good shot, son."

Yondu seems so proud, Peter doesn't have the guts to say he didn't mean to pull the trigger.

 

•••••••••

 

Celebrating holidays is not a small affair on Yondu's ship. The days of big holidays are flexible when calendars change from job to job, of course, but there is without fail a celebration every year. It's mostly just a big hodgepodge of traditions for everyone's cultures' major holidays, all mashed into one big fiasco where everyone drinks too much. Peter likes it, especially when he manages one year to talk Yondu into putting up a small Christmas tree in the mess.

Peter puts the tiny little thing, which is more like a multi-branched cactus than a tree, honestly, in the corner of the room, between two shrine-things that Kraglin and Fídi had set up for their own holidays. Then he takes a bunch of little baubles and knickknacks from around the ship, and puts them all on the 'tree'.

Most of the crew laughs at the pitiful little thing, and Peter feels a bit like Charlie Brown.

 

•••••••••

 

Ravagers don't have funerals; they don't do the whole 'solemn silent mourning' thing. They celebrate the lives of the dead then life goes on, that's just the way it is. If there's still a body and they're planet-side, the body's burned, which is what's happening to Latro's body now. A job had gone wrong, an ambush had been set up for them, and the Xandarian hadn't made it out.

Peter, sitting on the dusty ground, sips at a small bottle of what might be equated to Terran whiskey by anyone who tasted both. It's the first time he's even been allowed alcohol, and he decides it isn't very pleasant, but the burn takes away from the other pain he feels, just a bit. So he drinks it, and listens to Awesome Mix Vol. #1, and watches a last few sparks fly off the pyre. Almost everyone's gone back into the ship by now, some more drunk than others, since the fire's just about gone out, but a few other people remain. Catching movement out of the corner of his eye, Peter looks over to where Yondu and Kraglin are standing and talking. He slips off his headphones to eavesdrop, because Peter is nothing if not nosy.

"...In a long time." He hears Kraglin say.

"What, you forget how?" Yondu replies, taking Kraglin's left hand in his own.

"I would've forgot if I'd had the time for it." Kraglin says, so quiet Peter has to strain to hear the words across the space between all of them. "I didn't think you remembered it; it ain't a Centaurian dance."

Yondu steps back from the First Mate, their hands still clasped, and Kraglin repeats the motion, the two of them stepping back toward each other at the same time, and beginning what looks like some type of slow dance.

"Old Xandarian dance of mourning." Asa explains quietly in Peter's ear, and the Terran startles at the medic's sudden appearance next to him. "Not many people still bother with it, but Kraglin and the Captain have been doin' it for everyone who dies since any of us can remember. Haven't had to in a long time, though; last death we had was before we picked you up on Terra."

Peter doesn't answer, watching Yondu and Kraglin dance through the remaining smoke hanging around them from Latro's pyre.

 

•••••••••

 

"Sit still, you little maggot!" Edira grits hir teeth, snipping away at Peter's hair and pretending not to hear the Terran's griping. Twice a year, or thereabouts, the Ravagers go planet-side for a few days and buy new clothes for those who need them, and everyone with hair gets a haircut, courtesy of Edira. The entire crew agrees that it is a terrifying experience to have hir anywhere near one's head with scissors.

"I just got this shirt, and you're covering it in itchy hair." Peter complains, grumbling to himself when Edira doesn't respond. The teenager watches bits of his hair float down to land on his new t-shirt. "And it's Terran, too. I can never find Terran-style clothes."

"Shut up." Edira nicks the skin on the back of Quill's neck, making Peter flinch away with a small yelp. The boy suspects ze did it on purpose. Jerk.

"Have you done Sinenfa's hair yet?"  Peter asks.

"No." Edira says savagely. "She and Horuz and Kinnon all hid good this time, I haven't seen any of 'em all day."

"If I tell you where Sinenfa is can I keep more of my hair?" Peter inquires. Edira presses hir lips together in a thin line, mulling it over.

"Tell me where Sinenfa is _and_ holler if you see either of the boys, and I will finish evening this out and be done with you." Edira bargains.

"Deal."

 

"You fucking traitor!" Sinenfa yells from where she's being held down for a haircut. Peter smiles at her with mock innocence from across the room, and she sends him a crude hand gesture.

 

•••••••••

 

Holding on to the med-table so hard his knuckles turn white, Peter counts his breath to make sure each one stays nice and slow. He hisses through his teeth at the pain, but remains as still as he can be while Doc Asa fixes up the gash along his side.

"You're lucky it isn't very deep." The medic says in between stitches, looking up when the infirmary door opens.

"Boy, you're a complete idiot." Yondu says flatly.

"I could’ve told you that." Asa snorts, pulling another stitch tight as xe speaks. Peter grimaces, trying not to flinch away from the needle.

"How old're you now, Quill?" Yondu demands.

"Seventeen?" Peter guesses.

"Seventeen years old an' you still haven't figured out how to stay on the right side of a knife." Yondu glares, and Peter grins sheepishly.

"Not my fault Fídi ditched me." Peter replies, laughing when the crew member in question can be heard sputtering indignantly from just outside the infirmary.

"You ditched _me_ , asshole!" Fídi says loudly. "And that Oqupsie nearly slit my throat while I was trying to rescue you!"

"I did get us the money, though." Peter defends, cringing when Yondu claps a hand down on his shoulder.

"That you did." Yondu grins. "Nice job, son. I might just give you an M-ship yet."

Peter resists the urge to punch the air, if only because that would be super painful right now.

"That would be awesome." He says instead. "I've already got a name picked out for her and everything."

"Yeah, we know, boy." Yondu chuckles in amusement.

 

•••••••••

 

Peter gets the _Milano_ when he's nineteen, almost twenty, and he starts going on solo jobs a month after, but it isn't for another twelve years before he starts trying to break off from Yondu; starts trying to make his own way. It isn't for another two years after that before he finally succeeds, and is almost immediately arrested by the Nova Corps and dragged by a former assassin into saving the galaxy.

After it's all over, Xandar is safe and Groot isn't dead after all which is awesome, Peter is sitting on his bunk, watching a beat up old good luck charm from Traobos spin on its string.

"Peter? Are you alright?" Gamora asks from the doorway, and Peter looks up with a small smile.

"Yeah. Yeah, I'm fine." He says. "It's just..."

Gamora sits on the edge of the mattress and waits for him to continue, and Peter chuckles slightly.

"It wasn't all bad, you know. Growing up with them." He says. He doesn't have to explain who 'they' are. "I know Yondu seemed a bit psychotic, back there, and he is, don't get me wrong, I'd never call him a good father figure...but he wasn't actually that shitty of a Captain."

"When did you get this ship?" Gamora asks.

"'Bout fourteen years ago. Why?"

"Then Yondu would have had reason to put a bounty out on you a long time ago if your time on his crew had been all bad." Gamora states matter-of-factly. Peter nods, knowing that she gets it.

"Yeah." He puts the charm in his pocket, smiling at her. "What's going on? Did you come back here to get me for something?"

"Yes." Gamora stands, smiling and offering her hand down to pull Quill up as well. "Rocket has found us a job not far from here, I told him to wait for everyone's opinion on whether we should take it."

"On a scale of one to ten, how illegal will this job be?" Peter asks, grinning. Gamora tilts her head, pretending to think hard on the matter.

"I would say four." She answers. Peter nods, adopting a look of thoughtful satisfaction.

"Sounds good to me." He grins, and the two of them leave the room hand in hand.


End file.
